Stay with us now as we hear how a team approach -- including the plant operators, consulting experts and latest in hybrid IT systems -- joins forces for rapid process and productivity optimization results.

Bringing higher levels of automation to data center infrastructure has long been a priority for IT operators, but it's only been in the past few years that they have actually enjoyed truly workable solutions for composability.

The growing complexities, from hybrid cloud and the pressing need for conservation of IT spend -- as well as the need to find high-level IT skills -- means there is no going back. Indeed, there is little time for even a plateau on innovation around composability.

Stay with us now as we explore how pervasive increasingly intelligent IT automation and composability can be with Gary Thome, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Composable Cloud at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The interview is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect enterprise management innovations discussion explores the role of the modern chief operating officer (COO) and how they are tasked with creating new people-first strategies in an age of increased automation and data-driven intelligence.

The next BriefingsDirect healthcare insights discussion explores the shift medical services providers are making to improve the overall patient experience.

Taking a page from modern, data-driven industries that emphasize consumer satisfaction and ease, a major hospital in the New York metro area has embarked on a journey to transform healthcare-as-a-service.

To learn more about the surging importance and relevance for improving patient experiences in the healthcare sector using the many tools available to other types of businesses, we are joined by Laura Semlies, Vice President of Digital Patient Experience, at Northwell Health in metro New York, and Julie Gerdeman, President at HealthPay24 in Mechanicsburg, Penn. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

We’ll now hear how Alfa Romeo Racing (formerly Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team) in Hinwil, Switzerland leverages the latest in IT to bring hard-to-find but momentous design improvements -- from simulation, to wind tunnel, to test track, and ultimately, to victory. The goal: To produce cars that are glued to the asphalt and best slice through the air.

When it comes to healthcare, time is of the essence and every second counts, but healthcare is a different game today. Doctors and clinicians, once able to focus exclusively on patients, are now being pulled into administrative tasks that can eat into their capability to deliver care.

To give them back their precious time, innovative healthcare organizations are turning to a new breed of intelligent digital workspace technologies. We are now joined by two leaders who will share their thoughts on how these solutions change the game and help transform healthcare as we know it.

The recent required publishing of hospital charges for medical procedures is but one example of rapid regulatory and market changes. The emergence of more data about costs across the health provider marketplace could be a major step toward educated choices – and ultimately more efficiency and lower total expenditures.

But early-stage cost transparency also runs the risk of out-of-context information that offers little actionable insight into actual consumer costs and obligations. And unfiltered information requirements also place new burdens on physicians, caregivers, and providers – in areas that have more to do with economics than healthcare.

We’ll now explore how a major financial transactions provider is exploiting cloud models to extend a distributed real-time payment capability across the globe. Due to the needs for localized data storage, privacy regulations compliance, and lightning-fast transactions speeds, this extreme cloud-use formula pushes the boundaries -- and possibilities -- for hybrid cloud solutions.

Since its delivery in 2015 by The Open Group, IT4IT has focused on defining, sourcing, consuming, and managing services across the IT function’s value stream to its stakeholders. Among its earliest and most ardent users are IT vendors, startups, and global professional services providers.

To learn more about how this variety of highly efficient businesses and their IT organizations make the most of IT4IT – often as a complimentary mix of frameworks and methodologies -- we are now joined by our panel:

We’ll now hear how more enterprises are optimizing their IT kit and finding innovative means to reduce waste -- as well as reduce energy consumption and therefore their carbon footprint. Stay with us as we learn how a circular economy mindset both improves sustainability as a benefit to individual companies as well as the overall environment.

Stay with us to learn how a hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computer solves the last few feet issue for delivering a business’ best data and visual assets to some of its most critical onsite workers.

The next BriefingsDirect business trends panel discussion explores how the role of the data scientist in the enterprise is expanding in both importance and influence.

Data scientists are now among the most highly sought-after professionals, and they are being called on to work more closely than ever with enterprise strategists to predict emerging trends, optimize outcomes, and create entirely new kinds of business value.

The next BriefingsDirect hybrid IT management strategies interview explores new ways that businesses should procure and consume IT-as-a-service. We’ll now hear from an IT industry analyst on why changes in cloud deployment models are forcing a rethinking of IT economics -- and maybe even the very nature of acquiring and cost-optimizing digital business services.

The next BriefingsDirect manufacturing modernization and optimization case study centers on how a Canadian maker of containers leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) to create a positive cycle of insights and applied learning.

We will now hear how CuBE Packaging Solutions, Inc. in Aurora, Ontario has deployed edge intelligence to make 21 formerly isolated machines act as a single, coordinated system as it churns out millions of reusable package units per month.

Stay with us as we explore how harnessing edge data with more centralized real-time analytics integration cooks up the winning formula for an ongoing journey of efficiency, quality control, and end-to-end factory improvement.

Here to describe the challenges and solutions for injecting IoT into a plastic container’s production advancement success journey is Len Chopin, President at CuBE Packaging Solutions. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect digital strategies interview examines why many businesses struggle with cloud computing adoption, and how they could improve by attaining a culture directed at cloud consumption and total productivity.

The next BriefingsDirectcomposable cloud strategies interview explores how changes in business organization and culture demand a new approach to leadership over such functions as hybrid and multi-cloud procurement and optimization.

We’ll now hear from an IT industry analyst about the forces reshaping the consumption of hybrid cloud services and why the model around procurement must be accompanied by an updated organizational approach -- perhaps even a new office or category of officer in the business category.

Here to help explore who -- or what -- should be in charge of spurring effective change in how companies acquire, use, and refine their new breeds of IT is John Abbott, Vice President of Infrastructure and Co-Founder of The 451 Group. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect hybrid IT strategies interview explores how new maturity in the management and composition of multiple facets of IT -- from cloud to bare-metal, from serverless to legacy systems -- amount to a culmination of 30 years of IT evolution.

We’ll hear now from an IT industry analyst about why – for perhaps the first time -- we’re able to gain an uber-view over all of IT operations. And we’ll explore how increased automation over complexity such as hybrid and multicloud deployments sets the stage for artificial intelligence (AI) in IT operations, or AIOps.

It may mean finally mastering IT heterogeneity and giving businesses the means to truly manage how they govern and sustain all of their digital business assets.

With more than 40 million employee records to both protect and mine, ADP is in a unique position to leverage its business data network for unprecedented intelligence on employee trends, risks, and productivity. ADP is entering a bold new era in talent management by deploying advanced infrastructure to support data assimilation and refinement of a vast, secure data lake as foundations for machine learning (ML).

Stay with us as we unpack how advances in infrastructure, data access, and AI combine to produce a step-change in human capital analytics with panelists Marc Rind, Vice President of Product Development and Chief Data Scientist at ADP Analytics and Big Data, and Dr. Eng Lim Goh, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect data center architecture modernization journey interview explores how HP Inc. (HPI) has rapidly separated and modernized a set of data centers as part of its splitting off from what has become Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

We will now learn how HP Inc. has taken four shared data centers and transitioned to two agile ones, with higher performance, lower costs, and an obsolescence-resistant and strategic infrastructure design.

Here to help us define the data center of the future are Sharon Bottome, Vice President and Head of Infrastructure Services at HPI, and Piyush Agarwal, Senior Director of Infrastructure Services, also at HPI. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect cloud deployment strategies interview explores how public cloud adoption is not reaching its potential due to outdated behaviors and persistent dissonance between what businesses can do and will do with cloud strengths.

Many of our ongoing hybrid IT and cloud computing discussions focus on infrastructure trends that support the evolving hybrid IT continuum. Today’s focus shifts to behavior -- how individuals and groups, both large and small, benefit from cloud adoption.

It turns out that a dark side to cloud points to a lackluster business outcome trend. A large part of the disappointment has to do with outdated behaviors and persistent dissonance between what line of business (LOB) practitioners can do and will do with their newfound cloud strengths.

We’ll now hear from an observer of worldwide cloud adoption patterns on why making cloud models a meaningful business benefit rests more with adjusting the wetware than any other variable.

The next BriefingsDirect digital business innovation panel discussion explores how a finance matchmaker application assists small businesses impacted by natural disasters in the United States.

By leveraging the data and trust inherent in established business networks, Apparent Financing by SAP creates digital handshakes between lenders and businesses in urgent need of working capital financing.

The solution’s participants -- all in the SAP Ariba Network -- are putting the innovative model to good use by initially assisting businesses impacted directly or via supply chain disruptions from natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes.

To learn how data-driven supplier ecosystems enable new kinds of matchmaker finance relationships that work rapidly and at low risk, we are joined by our panel, Vishal Shah, Co-Founder and General Manager of Apparent Financing by SAP; Alan Cohen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Payments and Financing at SAP Ariba, and Winslow Garnier, President of Garnier Group Technology Solutions, LLC in San Diego, California. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Many of the latest technologies -- such as Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, big data analytics, and cloud computing -- are making data-driven and efficiency-focused digital transformation more powerful. But exploiting these advances to improve municipal services for cities and urban government agencies face unique obstacles.

Challenges range from a lack of common data sharing frameworks, to immature governance over multi-agency projects, to the need to find investment funding amid tight public sector budgets.

The good news is that architectural framework methods, extended enterprise knowledge sharing, and common specifying and purchasing approaches have solved many similar issues in other domains.

BriefingsDirect recently sat down with a panel to explore how The Open Group is ambitiously seeking to improve the impact of smart cities initiatives by implementing what works organizationally among the most complex projects.

The next BriefingsDirect intelligent enterprise discussion explores new opportunities for innovation and value creation inside of business networks and among their powerful ecosystem of third party services providers.

We now explore how business and technology platforms have evolved into data insights networks, and why third-party businesses and modern analytics solutions are joining forces to create entirely new breeds of digital commerce and supply chain knowledge benefits.

To explain how business ecosystems are becoming incubators for value-added services for both business buyers and sellers, we welcome Sean Thompson, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Business Development and Ecosystem at SAP Ariba. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Modern dentistry depends on more than good care. It also demands rapid access to data and applications.

For a rapidly growing dental services company -- consisting of hundreds of dental offices spread across 10 US states -- the task of managing all of its data availability, privacy, and security needs grew complex and costly.

The next BriefingsDirect panel discussion explores the creation of new guidance on how digital business professionals should approach their expanding responsibilities.

Perhaps more than at any time in the history of business and IT, those tasked with planning, implementation, and best use of digital business tools are being transformed into a new breed of digital practitioner.

This discussion focuses on how The Open Group is ambitiously seeking to close the gap between IT education, business methods, and what it will take to truly succeed at such work over the next decades.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer use-case discussion explores how a European gaming company adopted new cloud management and governance capabilities with developer productivity as the prime motivator.

The comprehensive backup and recovery stack allowed Fatland’s production processing systems to snap back to use after only a few hours, but the value of intelligent and increasingly hybrid storage approaches go much further to assure the ongoing integrity of both systems -- and business outcomes.

The next BriefingsDirect hybrid cloud advancement interview explores how the triumvirate of a global data center hosting company, a hybrid cloud platform provider, and a global cloud community are solving some of the most vexing problems for bringing high-performance clouds to more regions around the globe.

Here to explain more about new breeds of hybrid cloud solutions are David Anderson, Global Alliance Director at Equinix for its Microsoft alliance, and Xavier Poisson, Vice-President of Worldwide Services Providers Business and Cloud28+ at HPE. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect thought leadership discussion explores how intelligence gleaned from business applications, data, and networks provides the best new hope for closing the digital transformation gap at many companies.

A recent global survey of procurement officers shows a major gap between where companies are and where they want to be when it comes to digital transformation. While 82 percent surveyed see digital transformation as having a major impact on processes -- only five percent so far see significant automation across their processes.

How can business networks and the cloud-based applications underlying them better help companies reach a more strategic level of business intelligence and automation?

We will now explore how the 2018 Ryder Cup match between European and US golf players places a unique combination of requirements on its operators and suppliers. As a result, the IT solutions needed to make the Ryder Cup better than ever for its 250,000 live spectators and sponsors will set a new benchmark for future mobile sports events.

Here to describe the challenges and solutions for making the latest networks and applications operate in a highly distributed environment is Michael Cole, Chief Technology Officer for the European Tour and Ryder Cup. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

To learn how data-driven methods and powerful new tools are transforming procurement into an impactful intelligence asset, BriefingsDirect recently sat down with David Herman, Chief Data Scientist for Strategic Procurement at SAP Ariba. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect digital business innovation interview explores how critical business functions provide unique vantage points from which to derive and act on enterprise intelligence.

These classic functions -- like procurement and supply chain management-- are proven catalysts for new value as businesses seek better ways to make sense of all of their data and to build more intelligent processes.

Solving security concerns has risen to the top of the requirements list for just about everyone, yet service providers in particular have had to step up their game.

Just as cloud models and outsourcing of more data center functions have become more popular, the security needs, too, across cloud models have grown even more fast-paced and pressing.

And as small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have turned to such managed service providers (MSPs) to be in effect their IT departments, they are also seeking those MSPs to serve as their best defenses against myriad and changing security risks.

The latest BriefingsDirect security insights discussion examines how MSPs in particular are building better security postures for their networks, data centers, and clients' operations.

One of the key elements of digital transformation is aligning core, cloud, and edge computing using the latest architectures and efficiencies. Yet new levels of simplicity are needed to satisfy all the requirements for both end users and IT operators.

The next BriefingsDirect hybrid IT management strategies interview explores how jerry-riggedapproaches to cloud adoption at many organizations have spawned complexity amid spiraling -- and even unknown -- costs.

We’ll hear now from an IT industry analyst about what causes unwieldy cloud use, and how new tools, processes, and methods are bringing insights and actionable analysis to regain control over hybrid IT sprawl.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Analyst hybrid IT and multicloud management discussion explores the causes of unwieldy cloud use and how new tools, processes, and methods are bringing insights and actionable analysis to gain control over hybrid IT sprawl.

Those seeking to know their customers well are finding that this sweeping new European Union (EU) law forces a dramatic shift in how customer data can be gathered, shared, and protected. And it means that low-touch marketing by mass data analysis and inference alone likely will need to revert to the good-old-fashioned handshake and more high-touch trust building approaches that bind people to people, and people to brands.

The next BriefingsDirect hybrid cloud strategies discussion examines how the use of containers has moved from developer infatuation to mainstream enterprise adoption.

As part of the wave of interest in containerization technology, Docker, Inc. has emerged as a leader in the field and has greased the skids for management and ease of use.

Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has embraced containers as a way to move beyond legacy virtualization and to provide both developers and IT operators more choice and efficiency as they seek to embrace hybrid cloud deployment scenarios.

Like the proverbial chocolate and peanut butter coming together -- or as I like to say, with Docker and HPE, fish and chips-- the two make a highly productive alliance and cloud ecosystem tag team.

Here to describe exactly how the Docker and HPE alliance accelerates modern and agile hybrid architectures, we are joined by two executives, Betty Junod, Senior Director of Product and Partner Marketing at Docker, and Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Global Alliances at HPE. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect panel discussion explores cloud adoption strategies that can simplify IT operations, provide cloud deployment choice -- and that make the most total economic sense.

Many data center operators face a crossroads now as they consider the strategic implications of new demands on their IT infrastructure and the new choices that they have when it comes to a cloud continuum of deployment options. These hybrid choices span not only cloud hosts and providers, but also platform technology choices such as containers, intelligent network fabrics, serverless computing, and, yes, even good old bare metal.

For thousands of companies, the evaluation of their cloud choices also impacts how they on can help conquer the “VMware tax” by moving beyond a traditional server virtualization legacy.

The complexity of choice goes further because long-term decisions about technology must also include implications for long-term recurring costs -- as well as business continuity. As IT architects and operators seek to best map a future from a VMware hypervisor and traditional data center architecture, they also need to consider openness and lock-in.

Our panelists review how public cloud providers and managed service providers (MSPs) are sweetening the deal to transition to predicable hybrid cloud models. The discussion is designed to help IT leaders to find the right trade-offs and the best rationale for making the strategic decisions for their organization's digital transformation.

Our panel of Micro Focus experts will explore new Dimensional Research survey findings gleaned from more than 500 enterprise cloud specifiers. We will share their concerns, requirements and demands for improving the monitoring, management and cost control over hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.

To learn more about interesting new cloud trends, we are joined by Harald Burose, Director of Product Management at Micro Focus, and he is based in Stuttgart; Ian Bromehead, Direct of Product Marketing at Micro Focus, and he is based in Grenoble, France, and Gary Brandt, Product Manager at Micro Focus, based in Sacramento. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect developer productivity insights interview explores how a South African insurance innovator has built a modern hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) IT environment that replicates databases so fast that developers can test and re-test to their hearts’ content.

We’ll now learn how this mobile business support infrastructure possesses a low-maintenance common core -- yet remains easily customizable for regional deployments just about anywhere.

Here to help us define the unique challenges of enabling mobile telecommunications operators in countries such as Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, we are joined by Mario Agati, Program Director at Ericsson, based in Amsterdam, and Chris James-Killer, Sales Director for HPE. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The advent of increased automation, data-driven decisions, powerful business networks, and the firepower of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are combining to elevate procurement -- and the professionals who drive it -- to a new plane of greater influence and impact.

To learn more about how rapidly evolving technology changes the future of procurement, the next BriefingsDirect panel discussion explores how and why innovation-fueled procurement will fill an increasingly strategic role for businesses.

Our future of procurement panelists are Julie Gerdeman, Vice President of the Digital Transformation Organization at SAP Ariba; Shivani Govil, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Products at SAP Ariba, and Matt Volker, Vice President of Supply Chain at NatureSweet in San Antonio, Texas. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect panel discussion explores how Step Up For Students (SUFS), a non-profit organization in Florida, has collaborated with SAP Ariba to launch MyScholarShop, a digital marketplace for education that bridges the information gap and levels the playing field for those students most in need.

Now assisting some 10,000 K-12 special needs and low-income students, the user-friendly marketplace empowers parents and guardians to find and purchase the best educational services for their children. In doing so, it also helps maximize availability of scholarship funds to enhance their learning.

The next BriefingsDirect IT business model innovation interview explores how pay-as-you-go models have emerged as a new way to align information technology (IT) needs with business imperatives. We’ll now learn how global aerospace and defense integrator Northrop Grumman has sought a revolution in business model transformation in how it acquires and manages IT.

Here to help explore how cloud computing-like consumption models can be applied more broadly is Ron Foudray, Vice President, Business Development for Technology Services at Northrop Grumman. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect data center financing agility interview explores how two Belgian hospitals are adjusting to dynamic healthcare economics to better compete and cooperate.

We will now explore how a regional hospital seeking efficiency -- and a teaching hospital seeking performance -- are meeting their unique requirements thanks to modern IT architectures and innovative IT buying methods.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer vertical industry disruption solutions interview explores how intelligence, edge computing, and a rethinking of the user experience come together to give retailers a business-boosting makeover.

We’ll now learn how Deloitte and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are helping traditional retailers -- as well as hospitality organizations and restaurants -- provide a more consistent, convenient, and contiguous user experience across their businesses.

The use of containers by developers -- and now increasingly IT operators -- has grown from infatuation to deep and abiding love. But as with any long-term affair, the honeymoon soon leads to needing to live well together ... and maybe even getting some relationship help along the way.

And so it goes with container orchestration and automation solutions, which are rapidly emerging as the means to maintain the bliss between rapid container adoption and broad container use among multiple cloud hosts.

This BriefingsDirect cloud services maturity discussion focuses on new ways to gain container orchestration, to better use serverless computing models, and employ inclusive management to keep the container love alive.

These providers of healthcare are usually sprawling campuses with large ecosystems of practitioners, suppliers, and patient-facing facilities. They also operate under stringent compliance requirements, with data privacy as a top priority.

At the same time, large hospitals and their extended communities are seeking to become more patient outcome-focused as they deliver ease-of-use, the best applications, as well as up-to-date data analysis to their staffs and physicians.

The next BriefingsDirect security insights discussion examines how a large Missouri medical center developed a comprehensive healthcare infrastructure security strategy from the edge to the data center -- and everything in between.

The next BriefingsDirect cloud efficiency case study explores how a storage-as-a-service offering in a university setting gains performance and lower total cost benefits by a move to all-flash storage.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Analyst interview examines the growing need for proper rationalizing of which apps, workloads, services and data should go where across a hybrid IT continuum.

Managing hybrid IT necessitates not only a choice between public cloud and private cloud, but a more granular approach to picking and choosing which assets go where based on performance, costs, compliance, and business agility.

Implementing and managing IT security has leaped in complexity for organizations ranging from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to massive government agencies.

Once-safe products used to thwart invasions now have been exploited. E-mail phishing campaigns are far more sophisticated, leading to damaging ransomware attacks.

What’s more, the jack-of-all-trades IT leaders of the mid-market concerns are striving to protect more data types on and off premises, their workload servers and expanded networks, as well as the many essential devices of the mobile workforce.

Security demands have gone up, yet there is a continual need for reduced manual labor and costs -- while protecting assets sooner and better.

The next BriefingsDirect security strategies case study examines how a Kansas economic development organization has been able to gain peace of mind by relying on increased automation and intelligence in how it secures its systems and people.

Here to report on how international companies must factor localization, data sovereignty and other regional factors into any transition to sustainable hybrid IT is Peter Burris, Head of Research at Wikibon. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Join us now as we hear from leading IT industry analysts and consultants on how to make the hybrid IT journey to successful digital business transformation. To report on how companies and IT leaders are managing an increasingly complex transition to sustainable hybrid IT, we are joined by Tim Crawford, CIO Strategic Advisor at AVOA in Los Angeles. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect cloud efficiency case study examines how a world-class private cloud project evolved in the financial sector.

We’ll now learn how public cloud-like experiences, agility, and cost structures are being delivered via a strictly on-premises model built on hyper-converged infrastructure for a risk-sensitive financial services company.

We’ll now learn how Carnegie Mellon University and a team of researchers there are producing amazing results with strategic reasoning thanks in part to powerful new memory-intense systems architectures.

The next BriefingsDirect IT financing and acquisition strategies insights interview examines how Nokia is refactoring the video delivery business. Learn both about new video delivery architectures and the creative ways media companies are paying for the technology that supports them.

Bringing a central IT focus to large public school systems has always been a challenge, but bringing a security focus to thousands of PCs and devices has been compared to bringing law and order to the Wild West.

For the Clay County School District in Florida, a team of IT administrators is grabbing the bull by the horns nonetheless to create a new culture of computing safety -- without breaking the bank.

The next BriefingsDirect security insight’s discussion examines how Clay County is building a secure posture for their edge, network, and data centers while allowing the right mix and access for exploration necessary in an educational environment.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer HPC and edge computing strategies interview explores how a video delivery and customization capability has moved to the network edge -- and closer to consumers -- to support live, multi-screen Internet Protocol (IP) entertainment delivery.

We’ll learn how hybrid technology and new workflows for IP-delivered digital video are being re-architected -- with significant benefits to the end-user experience, as well as with new monetization values to the content providers.

The next BriefingsDirect healthcare thought leadership panel discussion examines how a global standards body, The Open Group, is working to improve how the healthcare industry functions.

We’ll now learn how The Open Group Healthcare Forum (HCF) is advancing best practices and methods for better leveraging IT in healthcare ecosystems. And we’ll examine the forum’s Health Enterprise Reference Architecture (HERA) initiative and its role in standardizing IT architectures. The goal is to foster better boundaryless interoperability within and between healthcare public and private sector organizations.

We’ll now learn what enterprises can do to make the most of hybrid cloud models and be ready specifically for Microsoft’s solutions for balancing the boundaries between public and private cloud deployments.

The next BriefingsDirect customer experience insights discussion explores how Contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) capabilities are becoming more powerful as a result of leveraging cloud computing, multi-mode communications channels, and the ability to provide optimized and contextual user experiences.

More than ever, businesses have to make difficult and complex decisions about how to best source their customer-facing services. Which apps and services, what data and resources should be in the cloud or on-premises -- or in some combination -- are among the most consequential choices business leaders now face. As the confluence of cloud and unified communications (UC) -- along with data-driven analytics -- gain traction, the contact center function stands out.

We’ll now hear why traditional contact center technology has become outdated, inflexible and cumbersome, and why CCaaS is becoming more popular in meeting the heightened user experience requirements of today.

The next BriefingsDirect digital business insights panel discussion focuses on the evolving role of women in business leadership. We’ll explore how pervasive business networks are impacting relationships and changes in business leadership requirements and opportunities for women.

When it comes to securing systems and data, the bad guys are constantly upping their games -- finding new ways to infiltrate businesses and users. Those who protect systems from these cascading threats must be ever vigilant for new technical advances in detection and protection. In fact, they must out-innovate their assailants.

The next BriefingsDirect security insights discussion examines the relationship between security and virtualization. We will now delve into how adaptive companies are finding ways to leverage their virtualization environments to become more resilient, more intelligent, and how they can protect themselves in new ways.

To learn how to ensure that virtualized data centers do not pose risks -- but in fact prove more defensible -- we are joined by two security-focused executives, Kurt Roemer, Chief Security Strategist at Citrix, and Harish Agastya, Vice President for Enterprise Solutions at Bitdefender. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect global digital business panel discussion explores how the expansion of automated tactical buying for business commerce is impacting global markets, and what's in store next for Latin America.

We’ll specifically examine how “spot buy” approaches enable companies to make time-sensitive and often mission-critical purchases, even in complex and dynamic settings, like Latin America.

The next BriefingsDirect digital business thought leadership panel discussion explores new ways that companies can gain improved visibility, analytics, and predictive responses to better manage supply chain risk in the digital economy.

The panel examines how companies such as Nielsen are using cognitive computing search engines, and even machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), to reduce risk in their overall buying and acquisitions.

The next BriefingsDirect digital business thought leadership panel discussion examines the major opportunity from bringing Blockchain technology to business-to-business (B2B) procurement and supply chain management.

We will now explore how Blockchain’s unique capabilities can provide comprehensive visibility across global supply chains and drive simpler verification of authenticity, security, and ultimately control.

To learn more about how Blockchain is poised to impact and improve supply chain risk and management, we're joined by Joe Fox, Senior Vice President for Business Development and Strategy at SAP Ariba, and Leanne Kemp, Founder and CEO of Everledger, based in London.

The next BriefingsDirect inside story examination of security best practices focuses on the building of a security operations center (SOC) for cyber defense. Learn how Zayo Group in Boulder, Colorado built a state-of-the-art SOC as it expanded its international managed security service provider practice.

Join the podcast as we hear directly from Mike Vamvakaris, Vice President of Managed Cyber Security at Zayo Group, on the build-out, best practices, and end-results from this impressive project. The moderator is Serge Bertini, Vice President of Sales and General Manager of the Canada Security Division at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The next BriefingsDirect digital business thought leadership panel discussion focuses on the latest path to gaining improved diversity across inclusive supply chains.

The panel examines why companies are seeking to improve supplier diversity, the business and societal benefits, and the new tools and technologies that are making attaining inclusive suppliers easier than ever.

Stay with us now as we develop a new vision for how today's cutting-edge technologies will usher in tomorrow's most powerful business tools and processes. The panel was assembled and recorded at the recent 2017 SAP Ariba LIVE conference in Las Vegas.

We'll explore here how implementing IoT strategies is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor -- nor can it be bought off the shelf. What’s more, those new to the computational hive and analytical edge attributes of IoT are discovering that it takes a team approach.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer cloud adoption patterns discussion explores how integration of the latest cloud tools and methods help smooth out the difficult task of creating and maintaining cloud-infrastructure services contracts.

The results are more flexible digital services that both save cloud consumers money and provide the proper service levels and performance characteristics for each unique enterprise and small business.

Stay with us now as we hear from a Tasmanian digital services provider, TasmaNet, about their solution-level approach to cloud services attainment, especially from mid-market enterprises. To share how proper cloud procurement leads to new digital business innovations, we're joined by Joel Harris, Managing Director of TasmaNet in Hobart, Tasmania. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect thought leader interview explores how digital disruption demands that businesses develop a new ideology of hybrid IT.

We'll hear how such trends as Internet of things (IoT), distributed IT, data sovereignty requirements, and pervasive security concerns are combining to challenge how IT operates. And we'll learn how IT organizations are shifting to become strategists and internal service providers, and how that supports adoption of hybrid IT. We will also delve into how converged and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI) provide an on-ramp to hybrid cloud strategies and adoption.

The next BriefingsDirect thought leadership panel discussion explores the rapidly evolving architectural shift of moving advanced IT capabilities to the edge to support Internet of Things (IoT) requirements.

The demands of data processing, real-time analytics, and platform efficiency at the intercept of IoT and business benefits have forced new technology approaches. We'll now learn how converged systems and high-performance data analysis platforms are bringing the data center to the operational technology (OT) edge.

The next BriefingsDirect digital transformation case study highlights how a Swiss engineering firm created an appliance that quickly deploys to index and deliver comprehensive business information.

By scouring thousands of formats and hundreds of languages, the approach then provides via a simple search interface unprecedented access to trends, leads, and the makings of highly informed business decisions.

We will now explore how SEC 1.01 AG delivers a truly intelligent services solution -- one that returns new information to ongoing queries and combines internal and external information on all sorts of resources to produce a 360-degree view of end users’ areas of intense interest.

The next BriefingsDirect applications health monitoring interview explores how a new breed of continuous intelligence emerges by gaining data from systems infrastructure logs -- either on-premises or in the cloud -- and then cross-referencing that with intrinsic business metrics information.

We’ll now explore how these new levels of insight and intelligence into what really goes on underneath the covers of modern applications helps ensure that apps are built, deployed, and operated properly.

Today, more than ever, how a company's applications perform equates with how the company itself performs and is perceived. From airlines to retail, from finding cabs to gaming, how the applications work deeply impacts how the business processes and business outcomes work, too.

We’re joined by an executive from Sumo Logic to learn why modern applications are different, what's needed to make them robust and agile, and how the right mix of data, metrics and machine learning provides the means to make and keep apps operating better than ever.

The next BriefingsDirect digital transformation case study explores how UK IT consultancy OCSL has set its sights on the holy grail of hybrid IT -- helping its clients to find and attain the right mix of hybrid cloud.

By leveraging entity recognition APIs, LogitBot not only provides investment evaluations from across these data sets, it delivers the analysis as natural-language information directly into spreadsheets as the delivery endpoint. This is a prime example of how complex cloud-to core-to edge processes and benefits can be managed and exploited using the most responsive big-data APIs and services.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation case study highlights how online travel and events pioneer lastminute.com leverages big-data analytics with speed at scale to provide business advantages to online travel services. We'll explore how lastminute.com manages massive volumes of data to support cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms to allow for speed and automation in the rapidly evolving global online travel research and bookings business.

To learn how a culture of IT innovation helps make highly dynamic customer interactions for online travel a major differentiator, we're joined by Filippo Onorato, Chief Information Officer at lastminute.com group in Chiasso, Switzerland. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect'sDana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation case study highlights how newly combined Finnish national gaming company, Veikkaus, is managing a complex merger process while also bringing more of a digital advantage to both its operations and business model. We'll explore how Veikkaus uses a power big-dataanalytics platform to respond rapidly to the challenges of digitization.

To learn how a culture of IT innovation is helping to establish a single wholly nationally-owned company to operate gaming and gambling in Finland, we're joined by Harri Räsänen, Information and Communications Technology Architect at Veikkaus in Helsinki. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect'sDana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.